If we had known the crowds that would surround us as we attempted to maneuver about on New Years Day, we surely would have stayed inside! As it was, we headed into town, oblivious to the masses as we stood on the Guang Di bus (that already should have given us a hint!). We met one of my old boyfriends and his parents at the Starbucks of a well-known mall. It was great to meet up and catch up on each other’s lives, as well as to introduce him to David. We enjoyed a great meal at a Brazilian-style BBQ restaurant. David and Jp really enjoyed all the meat, although David couldn’t help comparing it to the real Brazilian Churrascurias!

We completed our meal with some ice-cream from a NZ company which funnily enough, Jp hadn’t even heard about! We were planning to see some of the sights, but Jp was called away to buy a real sleeping bag for his upcoming trip to Tibet. As we entered the metro station, we realized there was no way we could see anything…unless we wanted to see a sea of Chinese people! Literally, you could not see the floor, there were so many people! We gave up on that idea and headed home instead, enjoying the comfort and space of the bus! Aaron’s housing estate runs a bus hourly to and from the down town area for everyone who lives there. It is a great way to make living in the suburbs possible. Read More »»

What better way to spend the last day of 2006 than at one of China’s premiere art museums (well, one of China’s museums, anyway)? The museum’s walls greeted us with an eerily apropos religious statement (see above - if you can’t read it, it looks like the words “In God we trust” used to be affixed to the wall for years before being removed). I’m not sure what was more disconcerting, the fact that the words had been removed, or that they hadn’t bothered washing the walls afterwards (i.e. they didn’t care if people saw –or wanted people to see– that the words had been removed). Read More »»

To continue where David left off; after our whirlwind tour of “One-Link International Plaza” we met up with Aaron’s friend Miriam who was to take us to the infamous DVD “store” (the term can only be used very loosely here!). The existence and location of this place has been preserved through a long line of foreigners (makes you wonder how the first guy found it?). We made our way along the street, preparing ourselves to innocently wander to a store selling extension cords and other electrical stuff and surreptitiously ask for the DVD’s. Before we could put the plan into action, a little Chinese girl came out, spotted Miriam (a regular to the DVD store) and rushed us inside, around a pillar, through a door which led to a badly lit, damp hallway…(at this point we had to go back and find David who got left behind because he was busy taking photos!) Read More »»

We spent most of December 29th lounging around Aaron’s apartment and watching TV. After all, that’s what vacations are for, right? Aaron had to teach a class in the afternoon, but Taara brought along some TV shows to watch and Aaron has a large collection of Chinese bootle…er…perfectly legal DVDs, so they kept us busy.

In the evening we found ourselves headed towards Miriam and Heather’s house (two of Aaron’s friends who also teach English here in Guangzhou). Aaron brought home Pizza Hut pizza (real, pork pepperoni! we don’t get that in Bangladesh) and we enjoyed a nice game of Settlers (especially nice because I won!).

But the real fun was to begin on Day 4 of our trip, December 30, when Aaron introduced us to one of the many multi-storied wholesale shopping malls in Guangzhou, where stores are crammed together like sardines. We were able to snap some pictures of some of the interesting things we saw, so that we could share them with you. Read More »»

Here are some sights and memories from our second day in China (December 28). We started off the day early, checking out of our hotel in Kunming and heading to the airport to check into our flight.

We were impressed by the amount of influence that Christmas has had here, decorations were everywhere and a Christmas tree was prominently displayed in the hotel lobby (as well as in several places at the airport). There were Santa Claus faces everywhere, but absolutely no nativity scenes, which demonstrates how commercialized/paganized is the version of Christmas that has “infected” China. Well, I guess you could make an argument that the Western version of Christmas is just as paganized (ask Taara, we’ve had that conversation every Christmas over the past few years), but it’s usually tempered by at least some of an emphasis on the Christ in Christmas. Not so here in China, they’ve only imported the materialistic and commercial version of the holiday. Read More »»